Random blog posts about research in political communication, how people learn or don't learn from the media, why it all matters -- plus other stuff that interests me. It's my blog, after all. I can do what I want.

Friday, November 7, 2014

Party Schools vs Football Schools

There are party schools. There are football schools. And at first glance, at least with these data, they're not at all the same.

The Niche party rankings are useful because they include pretty much every school, unlike the Top 20 rankings we often see. That way I can start with the football rankings (here, the most recent AP rankings) and compare that to how well the schools ranked in, um, partyness. You'll see the table below. I can tell you there next to no correlation here (r = -.01). The top five ranked football schools had an average party ranking of 99.4, in large part hurt by Mississippi State's dismal 255 ranking and, to a lesser degree, Auburn's surprising 108 ranking. No doubt also scramming the data is Baylor, ranked 10th in football and, wow, 800th in partyness. Also, having highly ranked party schools like Wisconsin and West Virginia at the bottom of the Top 25 football rankings helps make the correlation next to nothing.

The Rankings

Football

Party

Mississippi State

1

255

Florida State

2

21

Auburn

3

108

Alabama

4

24

Oregon

5

89

TCU

6

70

Michigan State

7

16

Notre Dame

8

361

Kansas State

9

40

Baylor

10

800

Arizona State

11

43

Mississippi

12

49

Ohio State

13

22

LSU

14

67

Nebraska

15

84

Oklahoma

16

156

Georgia

17

3

UCLA

18

53

Clemson

19

171

Utah

20

489

Arizona

21

133

Duke

22

182

Marshall

23

180

West Virginia

24

8

Wisconsin

25

6

A few nerd points. The mean (average) party school ranking among the Top 25 football schools is 137.2, the median is 70. Why the difference? Because the mean is sensitive to outliers (I'm looking at you, Mississippi State, Baylor, Utah), hence it drags the number higher in this case. So we have a median of 70, meaning half the schools are above 70, half below. Well, except TCU, which sits right at the median. Four of the Top 10 schools are above the median, meaning that while they excel at football, their party school skills -- as measured by Niche's iffy methodology -- leaves something to be desired.

The worst stretch is from #20 to #24 (Clemson through Marshall). Five teams in a row above the party median.